For years, whispers of the secretive organization of world leaders known as the Bilderberg Group were considered fodder for conspiracy theories, but in the wake of massive economic upheaval, Europe’s mainstream has joined the clamoring to find out what kind of financial wizardry has been going on behind the Bilderberg curtain.

“In Spain, Bilderberg is the ‘it’ topic,” Estulin told WND. “The attention this is getting in the European mainstream press is equivalent to the New York Times or Wall Street Journal publishing extensively on it.”

The attention, Estulin said, has come as his predictions on the cost of oil and other economic factors – based on investigative reporting into the Bilderbergers – have proved more accurate than other economic models in Europe’s financial meltdown.

“Economists cannot explain it without acknowledging the shadow masters working to manipulate economies,” Estulin said. “There is a general awakening taking place in people and the national press. This is no longer the domain of conspiracy theorists. Especially in Europe, we’re seeing enough cracks to have hope that this dam will break and more and more people will demand to know what the Bilderberg Group has been doing.”

The Bilderberg Group is an annual, invitation-only conference usually with more than 100 of the globe’s most influential leaders, such as heads of state and business tycoons. It always is closed to the public and press, a privacy frequently ensured by armed agents.

WND reported attendance at last year’s event included U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner; Larry Summers, the director of the U.S. National Economic Council; Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan; World Bank President Robert Zoellick; European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso.

Look at the financial players involved, look at the Bilderberg Group’s history, then look at the world economy, Estulin says – you don’t have to be a conspiracy nut to recognize elite, powerful forces at work.

“Bilderberg is not some group of demonic world leaders sitting around a table staring into a crystal ball,” Estulin laughed. “In the U.S., a lot of people mistakenly believe there are secret societies, a very small group controlling the dynamics of the entire world, instead of understanding Bilderberg as a processes-, ideas- and themes-shaping organization.

“Bilderberg is not a bogeyman,” Estulin told WND, “but it is a powerful organization. It’s a medium for bringing together financial institutions – the largest, predatory institutions in the world – which acts in ways that are now the worst enemy of society.”

How is it an enemy? Estulin believes the current destruction of the economy, and particularly the assault on capitalist economics, is something that has been done on purpose, a meltdown orchestrated from behind the scenes to keep the masses dependent on the elite.

“To these powerful people, national resources are theirs, not everyone’s,” Estulin told WND. “All these people want an empire. They don’t want the people of the world to develop, to prosper, to grow the population. They want us to work for them, where our children and our children’s children work for an elite group, the oligarchy.

“If people participate in the ideas shaping the world, if a nation is allowed to grow its own food, develop its own natural resources, be truly self-governing, it would end the Bilderbergers’ oligarchy,” Estulin said.

He cites David Rockefeller’s own admission. Rockefeller, a Bilderberg member, wrote: “Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.”

Exposing the Bilderbergers to the world

Estulin has now been invited to speak to the European Parliament, considered one of the most powerful legislative bodies in the world, by Mario Borghezio, Italy’s most senior member.

Estulin compared his address there to an invitation to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress, a rare honor for anyone outside the ranks of the government.

Estulin believes the subject of the Bilderbergers never before has seen the light of day in front of such a highly respected audience.

His work will be part of a presentation titled “Bilderberg Group – Towards Creation of One World Company Ltd.,” which will include the work of Borghezio and British members Nigel Farage and Gerard Batten.

He connected the dots between the Bilderberg Group, world events, politicians and corporate tycoons over a period of 15 years.

Estulin reveals how the web of people and organizations has become a “shadow government whose top priority is to erase the sovereignty of all nation-states and supplant them with global corporate control of their economies under the surveillance of ‘an electronic global police state.’”

He reveals that not all members of the group are “bad,” explaining that membership is structured like concentric circles, with varying responsibilities and relationships. But it includes almost every famous player in politics and finance, such as George W. Bush, George Soros, George McGovern and Jimmy Carter.

Estulin writes: “This parallel world remains unseen in the daily struggles of most of humanity, but, believe me, it is there: a cesspool of duplicity and lies and double-speak and innuendo and blackmail and bribery. It is a surreal world of double and triple agents, of changing loyalties, of professional psychotic assassins, brainwashed black ops agents, soldiers of fortune and mercenaries, whose primary sources of income are the dirtiest and most despicable government-run subversive missions – the kind that can never be exposed.”

The conference this year is scheduled June 3-6 in Sitges, Spain.

Former British cabinet minister Lord Denis Healey, one of the founders of the group, explained the purpose of the group to Jon Ronson of the Guardian.

“Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn’t go on forever fighting one another for nothing and killing people and rendering millions homeless,” he said. “So we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing.”

In 2009 Estulin reported his sources told him the main topic of the last year’s agenda was the world economy. He said his sources inside the group told him the movers and shakers would be discussing two options – “either a prolonged, agonizing depression that dooms the world to decades of stagnation, decline, and poverty … or an intense-but-shorter depression that paves the way for a new sustainable economic world order, with less sovereignty but more efficiency.”

Estulin reports the following items will be on the Bilderberg Group’s 2010 agenda: